Best Big Deal

After a career that has already spanned decades and several respectable albums, all while soldiering on through countless setbacks and line-up changes, Alfred Morris III’s venerable doom-metal band, Iron Man, finally coalesced into a stable unit and managed to catch the ear of not one, but two of the world’s most renowned metal and extreme music labels: Europe’s Rise Above Records and America’s iconic Metal Blade records. Signing to those storied labels gave the band new vigor and attention, helping it play Europe and tour more extensively. The resulting record, “South of the Earth,” isn’t just the band’s most widely distributed and supported record to date—it’s also probably its best.